However, before I could utter a peep, Declan murmured, “Ma, I think Seamus would really like a drink.”
Lena tensed, then her eyes flashed wide. Her red hair wasn’t as bright as I remembered from childhood, streaked liberally with silver and gold now, but it glinted in the sun as her hands came to cup her cheeks. “How could I forget my manners?”
She dragged Seamus off inside the house with him looking back at me with wide eyes that asked me to intervene, but when Aidan spun around to follow, Declan barked, “Da,” and my attention was averted.
Aidan, scowling, peered over his shoulder and groused, “What?”
“I told you about this before. You want Seamus in your life, you don’t treat Aela like she’s public enemy number one.” Everything inside me heated up at that. Fuck. I didn’t need him to defend me against goddamn Doyle, but his dad was different. I needed all the help I could get. “You treat her with respect.”
“You ain’t taking that boy anywhere.”
“I’ll take them both anywhere I damn well want. I’m not having you disrespect Aela. You got me?”
Aidan squinted at me and raked me with a disapproving glance before he shrugged and strode into the house.
“That didn’t go too badly,” I muttered, but before he could reply, the sounds of vehicles coming down the driveway made themselves known to me.
In a matter of moments, I’d been formally introduced to Aidan Jr., who I’d only seen glimpses of at Declan’s hospital room, and Finn O’Grady, his wife Aoife, and their baby boy Jacob. I glanced between them all, surprised because though I knew the names, and everyone in the Points was well aware that Finn was high up in the ranks but also like family, there was a disconcerting similarity between the two friends. I knew they’d met in school, so I wasn’t sure how that was possible, but the thought was rammed home when Eoghan showed up with his wife, Inessa.
There was a distinct similarity between them all.
I’d met Finn, Aoife, and Inessa back that night when everything had changed, when Amaryllis, my ex-student, had come to me for help. But I hadn’t exactly gone out of my way to get to know them. If anything, I’d been more worried about getting childcare for Seamus, and then, when I’d heard about Declan’s injuries, my focus had been solely on him.
Inessa had been kind though, Aoife too. Both women were at ease with the brothers in a way that shouldn’t have come as a shock, but still did because I was used to thinking of them as O’Donnellys and not regular men.
Still, these were the ones I knew the least, so when Brennan and Conor showed up, Conor driving, relief hit me. Declan, with his arm around my shoulders in a position similar to how I’d held Seamus close earlier, turned to face his other brothers.
“You drive like a fucking lunatic,” were the first words that managed to cross the distance.
Conor scoffed. “I drive like a regular person.”
“A regular person who needs goddamn glasses. You didn’t see that SUV in front of you, did you? How the fuck you didn’t rear end them, I’ll never know.”
“Because rear-ending is your fucking specialty?” Conor mocked, earning himself a bird flipped his way from Brennan.
“No swearing. Jacob’s a prodigy in the making,” Finn rumbled, “I don’t need him spitting out curse words.”
Brennan scowled at us en masse, before he groused, “Whose idea was it for boy wonder to drive me home?”
“I won’t be kind next time,” Conor grumbled.
“You can drive back with us,” I offered, knowing Seamus would appreciate that. He liked Conor and Brennan, and even though he’d seen more of them, I knew it wasn’t just having been around them that made him like their oddball humor. There was a real ‘odd couple’ vibe between the two brothers that, I couldn’t deny, was amusing as hell.
“Thank you,” Brennan muttered, crossing himself in relief. “I didn’t survive a shootout once this week to die in this dick’s passenger seat.”
I was grateful to both of them for breaking the ice, because ice had never been broken more perfectly than it was right then. It was easy to slip between Conor and Brennan, for Declan to be at my back. I knew them. I got them. They were, I realized with no small amount of astonishment, my kind of people.
Maybe I should want to hang around Aoife and Inessa, but they were, well, girly girls. They wore dresses and skirts, Inessa even had a patterned silk scarf around her neck that screamed Hermès, which I’d seen her use to cover her hair in church, whereas I wore black pants, a camisole on top of my Kevlar vest, and a structured, slim-fitting leather jacket.
As we all trudged inside, heading for a large living room that was dominated with a massive TV screen, and an equally massive sofa, what took me aback the most was how, wherever I looked, there were frames on the walls.
Picture on top of picture on top of picture.
It was incredible.
A still life movie of the O’Donnellys from birth to adulthood.
Entranced, I drifted around, taking stock of the different images, easily picking out the ones which were Declan. They all had the same bone structure, that mouth that was quick to smile, grimace, and snarl. They each were dark, some a little lighter here and there, but all of them—Finn included, were Black Irish.
As much as I loved seeing Declan, I had to admit—Finn fascinated me.
Not because he was beautiful, which he was. As an artist, I had to appreciate that there was something about him that took him up a level. Aoife was definitely a lucky lady. But there was something undeniable. Indefatigable.
Something that I’d never heard rumors about, which meant either Aidan Sr. had squashed them into dust a long time ago, or… well, nobody had ever figured it out.
It didn’t seem likely.
In fact, it seemed impossible. I couldn’t be the only one who saw the similarities, could I?
As I studied a picture that had my lips twitching when I took note of Conor shoving an ice cream cone in Declan’s hair, I wasn’t surprised when someone came to stand behind me.
I thought it’d be Declan or Seamus. Hadn’t expected it would be Aidan Sr.
Never turn your back on an enemy…
“Lena always had her camera stuck to her when they were boys,” he said softly, reminiscently. “And that was before the day of the iPhone, where every single picture had to be processed. Some would be ruined, some would be exposed, the film might be damaged… it mattered to her.”
“I can see that.” I cut him a look. “I’ll get some pictures of Seamus to you for the wall.”
He arched a brow, but he registered that I was on the same page as him. “It would be a kindness. She likes to document everything.”
“That much is clear,” I mused. “There a reason?”
“Her mother had Alzheimer’s. She’s terrified she’ll get it too and forget them.”
I’d never deny that the O’Donnellys were held up as monarchs of an unofficial kingdom, but hearing that humanized Lena in a way I couldn’t have expected.
She was the ice queen.
She ruled over the Five Points, just a step behind Aidan, making sure he kept his head. The cold to his intense heat that burned and burned, never seeming to drain, impossible to extinguish.
Everyone knew of his mercurial tempers, the moods that could see him fell a dozen enemies in a knife fight. He was lethal.
Deadly.
But I was looking at a picture of him in a drenched suit with a bunch of boys giggling around him after they’d, quite clearly, pushed him in a pool that gleamed behind them.
It was an insight into people who were revered—and feared—as gods.
Unnerving.
“If you’re going to give me crap about Seamus, don’t bother,” I warned softly, my focus still on the photos.
“Leave the girl alone, Aidan,” Lena chided, slipping up behind me with a silence that jolted me.
“I was merely conversing with her. She’s interested in the pictures. Said she
’ll give you some.”
“Oh!” Her voice changed. Morphing from concerned and a little chastising, to surprised and excited. “That would be lovely.”
“I have many,” I told her with a genuine smile. “I wasn’t as prolific with a camera as you, but I certainly took enough to drive him crazy.”
“The boys were used to it. I took pictures all the time.” She reached up and ran her fingers over a shot of a grumpy Declan in what looked like his communion suit. “Such a quiet boy,” she said softly. “We never understood him.”
“He’s not quiet,” I countered, twisting to look at her better. I felt a lot less ill at ease knowing Aidan Sr. had wandered off, because while I didn’t doubt Lena could cut me down effortlessly, I also knew she wouldn’t because of Seamus.
Only a woman with five boys could sense how close a mother and son would be. Hers were all incredibly protective of her, after all. Seamus was of me too. For so long, it had been us against the world…
“No?” She shrugged. “He was very different than the others. Never interested in sports, though he played to keep his brothers happy, never interested in books, never interested in anything at all.”
I found that hard to believe, especially as I knew he was fascinated by the arts. Enough that his home was a rogue’s gallery—literally—of stolen artwork. Nobody who was that obsessed, who spent a couple of million on a safe to protect lost paintings, could be classed as ‘uninterested.’
She just didn’t know him.
And that saddened the hell out of me.
“I see you disagree,” she observed softly. “There’s plenty a woman never learns about her son. That’s how it should be. He’s lived in his father’s shadow since he was a boy… it’s time that changed, I think.”
She drifted away without another word, no sign of distaste or disapproval in her statement, but neither was there any appreciation. But that was okay. Very likely, I wasn’t good enough for her son, but he disagreed and I was more than happy with that.
A few minutes later, Brennan disrupted me by asking, “What’s caught your attention?”
If it had been Declan, I’d have talked about Finn. Maybe mentioned his parents’ strange way of breaking the ice. Instead, because it was him, I murmured, “I like seeing you all this way. It reminds me that just because everyone in Manhattan is terrified of you, I don’t have to be.”
He snickered. “Not just everyone in Manhattan.”
Chuckling, I teased, “Most of the East Coast, huh?”
“Well, I hate to be modest.”
“He does. Hate to be modest,” Declan inserted, his hand slipping around my waist as smoothly as he slipped into the conversation. “Did the folks give you shit?” he grumbled. “I’m sorry, I was helping Shay out.”
I arched a brow. “With what?”
“Man stuff.”
What went up, had to go down—my brows furrowed. “What kind of man stuff?”
“Things women don’t understand.”
He and Brennan shared a look, but while they both seemed to understand, I really didn’t. “Huh?”
“Never mind. Just know I’d have come and saved you if I’d been able to.”
Despite the mystery, I patted his hand. “I know. They were semi-decent.”
“I, on the other hand, could have saved you, but I decided it was time to rip off the Band-Aid,” Brennan remarked, lifting his glass and taking a sip of what looked like a Bellini.
The big, tough Irish mobster rocking a sling on one shoulder and a holster on the other while holding a slender flute of champagne with peach juice was more than discordant.
In fact, it was jarring enough to make me want to paint it.
I didn’t particularly want Aidan Sr. or Lena’s approval. It wasn’t something that would keep me up at night. If they hated me, they hated me.
So be it.
I wasn’t, and never had been, an ass-kisser. With Aidan Sr. in particular, I wasn’t sure if getting rimmed was a surefire way to make him hate me more. All I could do was be strong, stand firm, and believe that I made the right decisions along the way.
Better communication might have kept Declan and me together, but back then, I didn’t think so. He was young, and like Lena had said—under his father’s thumb. I’d known that way back then. He’d come to me so many times after doing a job, and though he hadn’t said anything, I’d felt how lost he was. Sometimes, when he was inside me, that was the only time he’d felt found.
He’d even told me that once.
And it had resonated with me in a way that was beyond comprehension.
That had been better than an ‘I love you’ in my mind. To this day, it still probably meant more to me than any of the random crap men had a tendency of saying when they thought themselves tied to a woman.
But I knew, then and there, that I’d paint all of Lena’s boys and gift her the portraits.
And just like I knew she’d adore them, I knew they’d be my best work. Ever.
My muse had come to a decision—the O’Donnelly sons were going to be my next magnum opus.
DECLAN
Seamus’s cheeks were still red an hour later as we sat down for dinner. Because Inessa was more his age than ours, I understood his fascination with her, and I especially understood the impromptu boner that had him scurrying out of the room like he’d shit his pants.
At first, I’d thought Ma had said something to him, so I’d rushed after him and grabbed him to make sure he was okay. His glittery eyes, the red cheeks, the way he held his jacket close to him?
It was amazing how much I’d forgotten about being young. And it was amazing how fucking ancient that made me feel.
His voice still squeaked every now and then, and since he’d come to New York, he’d had a few zits, a couple of pimples. Nothing terrible. His top lip was getting some fuzz, and I was inordinately pleased that, when his beard came through, I’d be around to show him how to shave it.
I didn’t think there’d be much I’d be able to teach him, because Aela had done a bang-up job, but the man stuff? That was the crap she didn’t know.
And apparently I needed a reminder too, because until Shay went through the stuff, I couldn’t remember half of the crap that happened when you were a teenage boy.
Still, with his secret crush for his aunt under control—a thought that still made me want to laugh—I made sure that I grabbed a dish, held it for Aela as she served herself, then took what I needed too. I wanted the family to know she meant something to me.
She wasn’t a bitch.
She wasn’t here simply because she’d been the womb who dropped Seamus.
She was mine.
As I maneuvered my overwhelmed plate, chatter started around the table. As usual, I listened. Among so many voices, it was easier just to tune in, figure out what was what. There were so many big personalities around here that I preferred just to sit back and let them talk.
“You’ll never guess where Eoghan took me last night, Lena.”
Ma arched a brow. “Where?”
“The Bolshoi Ballet is in town,” she enthused, which had my ears pricking up with interest.
Fuck, I was really out of it if I didn’t know they were in the city.
“What did you see?” Aoife asked. “I’ve never seen a ballet, but I’d really love to go.”
“Swan Lake. It was incredible. I’ve been to a few but—”
Da, with his elbow on the table and his fork hanging from his hand, scowled at her then glowered at me like it was my fault I’d infected her with an appreciation for the ballet. “Looks like you’re not the only one who gets a kick out of watching a bunch of faggots, Declan. Why you’d want to watch them run around in fucking skirts—”
“Language,” Ma grumbled.
My mouth tightened because I knew what was coming, only, it didn’t.
“Is that a homosexual slur?”
I could feel the entire table grind to a halt at Seamus’s question. Nearl
y everyone stared at him, but I cast Aela a glance and saw she was smirking into her roast beef.
“Yeah, it’s a homosexual slur, kid,” she confirmed.
“You can’t say things like that,” Seamus piped up.
“Sure I can. A man can say whatever he wants when he’s at his own table,” Da rumbled, but I could sense he was only being patient because Seamus was who he was.
“You can’t. It’s insulting. Not only to anyone who’s gay, but also to Dad. I mean, he quite clearly isn’t gay. And just because he likes art and things doesn’t mean you can talk about him like that.”
Well, if that didn’t break my fucking heart.
I swear to fuck. My eyes prickled with goddamn tears at not only the first time he ever called me Dad—and I was no fool, I knew the second we were outside he’d go back to calling me Declan or not calling me anything at all—but that he chose to do so now? While he was defending me? Just… fuck.
Conor cleared his throat. “How messed up is it that the only person who’s ever defended Declan at this fucking table is his fourteen-year-old kid?” He dipped his chin. “Kudos to you, Shay.”
Unease drifted over the diners. I felt it gathering like storm clouds over us, shadows forging and dispersing as people’s attention drifted toward me. I kept my head down, like I usually did while I was under this roof, and carried on scraping up my food.
The second I could get out of here wasn’t a second too soon.
“A man shouldn’t be prancing around in tights,” Da ground out, and I knew he wasn’t happy about Seamus giving him lip. “And a man sure as fuck shouldn’t be wanting to watch a nancy boy prancing around like a fucking fairy.”
I could feel Seamus bristling from two seats down, but Ma sniped, “Aidan, shut your fool mouth.”
“No, if you don’t address issues then they’re impossible to resolve, Lena,” Seamus interjected, his tone calmer than his expression belied, like he was fourteen going on forty. “It’s a very antiquated way of thinking, Aidan. I’m sure you know that, and clinging onto your old-fashioned thought processes might seem more comfortable to you, but all you’re doing is being prejudiced against a lot of innocent people who only want the right to live their lives as they want, with who they want. They’re not hurting you, so why should it bother you who they’re with?”
Filthy Dark: A SECOND CHANCE/SECRET BABY, MAFIA ROMANCE (THE FIVE POINTS' MOB COLLECTION Book 3) Page 30